Noah has not slept in his bed in probably over a month. I'm not quite sure why...he has a different reason every day! The best is when we come in to check on the boys and can't find Noah. We always find him UNDER the bed. I asked him why he was under the bed and he told me that he was afraid of monsters! Silly kid...doesn't he know that MONSTERS live under the bed! Wait, I'm pretty sure Noah IS the monster under the bed!

We went to the County Fair on Saturday. It was tons of fun! We had a great time looking at all the prize winning animals, getting free junk, and eating fair food! The kids' favorite part was the little kid play area. They got to make "dirt buddies"...basically a chia pet head. We can't wait for them to sprout!

Here's Ar milking a cow. She was professional and loved it! She kept getting back in line over and over again!
All the kids loved the "corn" box. I had to watch Larkin like a hawk to keep her from eating the corn!
Ahhh!!! She is so cute!!
Check out that food...yeah, it tasted about as good as it looks! Greasy curly fries and yucky corn dogs...how can you mess up a corn dog??
Noah got to participate in Mother's Goose's little show. This is him telling "Udder Moose" as Josh called her, that he is 3 years old! What a cutie!

After the fair, we went to the Ward's Pioneer Picnic. It was really fun. There was lots of yummy food, lots of game, and good company! The Primary did a parade and also sang some pioneer songs. Both were very cute!

Here was Joshua's "bike" for the parade. He was the envy of many a little girl there!
Here's Noe with his instrument by the covered wagon. I have no idea where Noah's bike was...or his shoes for the parade!
Good old Arwen with her whistle, just riding around in circles!

Arwen is COMPETITIVE!! Aaron thinks she gets it from me (??) and I KNOW it is definitely a Nielsen trait...come on, have you never played a game with one of them?? Death is ALWAYS on the line, you leave not being able to hear from all the yelling, and someone always slams the door to their room in anger!! Not that it's bad, it is always such an adventure! Anyways, Arnie's true colors came through at the Pioneer Picnic during the tug-of-war contest. Check out these pictures. She was vicious!

She had to be at the end of the rope to make sure everyone on her team was behaving!
She even let herself get pulled to the grass and risked grass-stains for the contest!
Sometimes, it looked like she was going to cry, she was so into it! What a silly...who lost her other front tooth last week!!

My friend Jen took pictures of my kids while we were visiting her in Utah. They turned out AMAZING! I love them! Thanks so much, Jen! Here are my favorites!!

Can you believe it?? All of the Nielsen children looking AND smiling for the camera at the same time! They must be such well-behaved kids! Here's Joshua kissing his baby sister. I love it!
Noah adores Larkin. We always catch him giving her tons of hugs and kisses...to the point of mauling her! People always tell me that Larkin looks just like Arwen. They both have beautiful eyes, that's all I know!
Could brothers be any different looking? We call Josh our "brownie" because of his dark skin and eyes. And Noah is the fairest skinned of all the kids! These two sure get into lots of trouble together.

I sure do love my kids! How lucky am I??

Arwen! Arwen is such our princess! She is just gorgeous. (I think!!) Arwen is a really good, well-behaved child. She takes pride in keeping her room clean and helps a lot around the house...sometimes even without any complaint! Arwen takes ballet lessons and really enjoys them. She comes up with the FUNNIEST things to say ever. She is getting older, and with age comes SASSINESS, I am learning. I'm pretty sure she thinks she knows everything and loves to roll her eyes at me when I get surprised with something new she has learned. Arwen loves to read books. She loves to draw, play with scissors and tape, and put creations on my wall. She usually tapes them up, but the other day she told me that she was sick of me taking them off and so she GLUED her artwork to the wall so I couldn't take it off! She is really growing up fast. My little baby starts kindergarten soon!! How we love our Arnie!

Arwen has so much beautiful hair for a 5 year old and it sure looks cute when we do it up!
I loved this shot of her feet!
Check out that pouty, seductive look!! What am I gonna do with her??

Now for Noah! Noah is such a drama-king! Everything is either the end of the world, or the greatest thing in the universe with him! He is our treasure hunter. He is always asking Aaron to do magic and pull "treasures" out of his ear. Good thing Daddy likes treasures too and always has a pocket full of them! Noah is so mischievous! It gets him into lots of trouble often times. I'm pretty sure he's not trying to be naughty most of the time, but he sure always does horribly naughty things! Noah feels things so deeply...he gets his feelings hurt a lot, but also can love with a capacity that is amazing for a 3 year old. He's our fighter...watch out when he gets angry. (Memory can attest to this!) I'm trying hard to teach him other ways to solve problems...funny that my tiniest little kid is the bully! Noah is so smart and says the funniest, sweetest things and always has the most expressive looks on his face! Silly Noe, I sure do love you!

Ahhh! I can't get enough of looking into those eyes!
Here's his attempt at a wink! So cute!
Noah sure is a goof-ball!

Joshua!! How could you not love Joshua. Everyone needs a Joshua. He is so stinking cute. I just can't get enough of him. He is finally really learning to talk and I LOVE to hear all of the cute new things he comes up with everyday. He does naughty things lately and then turns and smiles at me and says, " Just kiddin!" He is always so willing to go along with any plan that Noah comes up with and get into lots of trouble. He also loves to play with Arwen. His favorite things are trains, playing with pretend food and the kitchen set, watching movies, chocolate, and going for walks with Daddy. He is definitely our mope. He can pout like no other. When he's in full-on pout mode, he does this cry out of a little corner of his mouth...that makes him look like Popeye! We love it!! Squashy Joshy is the greatest!

Joshua has the best, biggest smile!
He has got the most gorgeous dark brown eyes. I love them!
Ladies, watch out for this heart-throb!

And now for Sparkily Larkily! Larkin definitely has the brightest, bluest eyes of all the kids! They just sparkle! She is such a doll. She is always happy and smiling. She loves to be held and just jump in your lap. I love when she reaches up and will lightly touch my face...so sweet! For how good she is during the day, she is a MONSTER at night! I feel like I still have newborn most of the time! I just can't get angry though...look at that face! All of the kids just adore her...even Joshua. If you ask him who his best friend is, he always answers Larkin! We are so lucky to have this little one!

Just a little princess!
I think this is my Favorite picture of all. That is such a Larkin look, and I love it!
She is such a happy, content little girl.
And she finally knows how to sit! Yippee!!

Arwenism: I can't remember what Arwen and I were talking about the other day, but she mentioned something that I didn't know she knew. It totally surprised me so I asked her where she learned it. She rolled her eyes like I was so lame and answered in a tone that said...duh, mom, and said "I learned it on dot com." Oh. Of course. Dot com.

Joshua LOVES trains. Anytime he sees a bus, a big van, the MAX, or a real train he freaks out and yells, "TRAIN!!" for the next 10 minutes. It's pretty cute. I finally caved and bought him a little train set from IKEA the other day. He has not stopped playing it since I bought it. He cries anytime we have to leave and races to be the first one in the house yelling, "TRAIN," when we get back. I love to watch him and listen to him say ," Chuga chuga, whoo, whoo!" So sweet!!

Don't mess with Josh's trains. He can scream like nothing I have heard before...and he can hit pretty hard!
He likes to make the train crash and pretend to get upset and then fix it. He also likes to take a piece of the track apart and and say, "Think about it." That's what we say when we put the kids in a time out. He really has a great little imagination!

It's official...as of yesterday, Sparkly Larkily is a sitter! Yippee!!! She just turned 7 months and wanted to prove to us what a big girl she is!

You can't tell from this picture because I got some rugs, but I had Stanley Steemer come and clean and my carpet looks AMAZING!!! I am so pleased. It has never looked this good! I wouldn't mind having white carpet if I could afford to have it cleaned once a month!!
Lark is not crying here...she's just so excited that she can hardly keep from squealing!!
After we put the kids to bed last night we snuck into the girls' room and found Arwen and Larkin just playing together on the floor. So cute!

We went to the zoo on Friday. It was going to be a 75 degree day and we thought that sounded perfect zoo weather! Well, so did everyone else in Portland!! After driving around the zoo parking lot for half an hour and getting only one spot swiped from us, we made it in! The kids were all pretty grouchy from napping in the car, so we headed for the train first. I had hoped that Josh would LOVE it so much, but he wasn't all that impressed. I guess Joshua likes to appreciate trains from the sidelines! After the train we decided to get a treat...and a treat it was! Did you know they sell Ice Cream of the Future in individual packages now?? So yummy...probably not quite worth the price though! Then I took pictures of the kids running in the big grassy area. That's one reason I like the Oregon Zoo so much...the kids can run and play if they want to.

I finally got a cuter shot of Arwen's new grill. She is super proud of herself. She is going to town every time you look at her trying to get that second tooth out. It's been loose for about a month...but I guess it's not quite ready to come out!
EVERY shot I took of Noah, he was moping. You know...his life is so hard...his mean mom DRAGS him to the zoo, makes him eat ice cream, and then lets him play. You should probably call the child abuse police on me :) Anyways, I had a great time at the zoo!

Here's Arwen's new grin :) We pulled out her tooth on Sunday and the tooth fairy brought her a silver half dollar! I'm way excited because this was Arwen's dead tooth that has been dead for a couple of years! No more black tooth...get ready for huge, awkward grown-up teeth in a little body!!

Hooray! This is my 300th post!! To celebrate, we went to the beach...well not really, it was just a coincidence, but great fun anyways!! We headed off to the coast on Saturday...our first day in what seems like forever that we had NO obligations! We first drove to Canon Beach so we could stop by Bruce's Candy Shop. I was pleasantly delighted to see that they had expanded. If you gave me lots of money, I could be one happy girl in there! My favorite reason to go there is that they have the yummiest taffy ever!! They make it right there on location so it doesn't taste like trash and it is always fresh! It's amazing how much taffy you can get for $15!! Then we drove south a few minutes to Hug Point...one of our favorite spots. The kids had fun playing with the shovels and pails and basking in the sunshine!


Aaron dug a hole for Larkin under our blanket so she could sit and watch us while we played. Too bad it was too cold in the shade. Her little arms were ice cubes. She wasn't a happy camper anyways because she had shots the day before and was SOOO sick. She had a high fever and was super grouchy. Poor Larkin...it's so not like her!
Noah spent the entire time chasing waves and yelling things like, "Earthquake!!" He was so much fun to watch! When my back was turned and I would hear him scream, I was always certain that I would turn around and he would be drowning in the ocean...but nope, he was just so excited that he had to scream!!
Here is what Joshua spent the majority of his time doing...playing with the sand cars!
He ate LOTS of food with those sandy hands and it didn't even phase him! Oh to be a carefree child!
Arwen liked the little dot of sand she got on her ear when Noah kicked sand at her. She pretended it was an earring. Take a good look at that smile of hers...I will do a post later on of her new, maybe not improved :) smile!
Then we traveled South some more to the Tillamook Cheese Factory...another favorite!! We all got cones and I was pleased with the new flavor I tried...Cows in brownie batter! You need to try it! It was brownie flavored with some vanilla swirled in. Then it had little cow shaped chocolate peanut butter candies in it! So cute!! We let Lark try her round at her very first ice cream cone. She didn't let us down...she loved it as much as all the other kids have when they were babies!
I started out holding the cone and trying to keep her hands out of it. After about 3 seconds she shoved me out of the way, grabbed on, and dug in! We were both a sticky mess when it was done, but it was so worth it!! Then we went to out favorite beach in Tillamook and hunted agates. That was probably my favorite! Good old Arwen looks for about 5 minutes and ALWAYS spots the biggest and best agate! We always give a prize to the best and she hunts just long enough to find the best and then goes off and plays! The prize is always a Tillamook Beef Stick that we get at their factory store a few miles away from the Cheese Factory. It's 50 cents cheaper and way fresher than at the Factory! Fun times!!

We had so much fun on our latest vacation. Me and the kids drove to Salt Lake and picked my brother and his fiancee up to drive with us to Denver to visit my Mom and Dad. We had so much fun there! My parents watched the kids EVERY night and I got to hang out with Scott and Danielle and my sister Kelly and her new husband, Jonathan. It was so great meeting both Danielle and Jonathan. We love them both lots!! I was a slacker and missed out on a lot of good photo opportunities, but we had fun anyways!! We played lots, watched lots of movies, had yummy food, and went to lots of fun kid places. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa and everyone else for lots of fun!! Then we drove back to Utah and I stayed with my friend Jen for a few days. We had tons of fun...and I took NO pictures! Lame, I know! Jen did a photo shoot of my kids and I can't wait to get those pictures and post them! They are AMAZINGLY cute...Jen is the best photographer ever! Thanks Jen for letting us crash your place and hang out with you guys!!

July 3rd was my birthday! Jen took me out for lunch at the Olive Garden and then out for pedicures! It was sooo much fun!! We got back and Noah was dead asleep on the floor amidst a million other kids running around him. I should have figured something was up. We got in the van to go and visit Aunt Whitney and Meghan when Noah threw up ALL over. Happy Birthday to me!! Anyways, after so much vomit, we made it to play with Meg and Whit...which really wasn't too much playing and more cleaning up vomit and buying new clothes and a car seat...you know, what everyone wants to buy on their birthdays! Good old Noah!!!

It was so fun to see them though!! I LOVED Meg's new hair color and was so excited to hear about how much Whitney was loving BYU! We can't wait to see you girls at Christmas...or earlier maybe :)

We stopped to see Aaron's Grandma and Grandpa Green while we were in Utah. I know, I know, these are horrible pictures, but it was the best I could do with grumpy kids!!

The kids with their Great Grandparents!
I thought this picture was pretty cute with the girls and Grandma Green.

We found the coolest park ever in Denver! It was crazy! I read a story about it in the paper and how some parents didn't approve of the park because their kids couldn't figure out what to do on it since it was not like a normal park. They said they didn't like that the kids had to use their imaginations! Anyways my kids LOVED it!!

These thing spun in circles and the kids had fun getting dizzy!

This was Josha's favorite. He had fun spinning all the kids and making them fall down when they got out because they were so dizzy!
Go, Noe, Go!!
Here's my brother Scott and his fiancee, Danielle! We had lots of fun with them. Like I said, I totally slacked with taking pictures and didn't even get a picture of my sister Kelly, and her new husband, Jonathan. We had tons of fun with all of them!
Here's Larkily being a spinning madman!
Here's Josh trying to make Larkin sick!
There was a really awesome rock wall for the kids to boulder on. There were all kinds of other crazy stuff and misters for if it was hot and the kids wanted to play in the water. There was a sand area which made Noah SOOO happy!